Justice
Mocks Liberal Colleagues, Recent Decision on Sodomy Laws

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia Thursday said his colleagues on the
Court ignore the meaning of the Constitution when it suits their purposes.

Scalia, a conservative member of the high court, ridiculed the Court’s
recent ruling legalizing consensual gay sex, telling an audience of
conservative activists Thursday that the ruling ignores the Constitution in
favor of a modern, liberal sensibility.

“Most of today’s experts on the Constitution think the document written
in Philadelphia in 1787 was simply an early attempt at the construction of
what is called ‘a liberal political order,’ “ Scalia told a gathering at
the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.

The ruling in Lawrence v. Texas,
Scalia said, “held to be a constitutional right what had been a criminal
offense at the time of the founding and for nearly 200 years thereafter.”

Scalia spoke after standing with some 800 others to recite the Pledge of
Allegiance. The Supreme Court announced last week that it will hear a case
testing the constitutionality of the current version of the pledge as it is
recited in public schools. Scalia declined to take part because of remarks he
made earlier this year critical of a lower court ruling in the case.

The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals had found the Pledge was unconstitutional in public school classrooms
because it contains the phrase, “one nation, under God.”